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Originally Posted by RMS
You've certainly had a different experience than mine. My players generally have been very efficient and very clever with magic use. I have to guide them through things the first few sessions but they have generally run with it after that.
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I wish. Most of my players have been painfully thick. To give you an idea, at one time I asked people to show up each week with their character sheet, and dice. That was all I expected. I even gave people sets of dice. Yet for months the same people would show up each week and either not have their character sheet,the latest set of dice I gave them the previous week, or both. If they couldn't accomplish that, you can imagine how well they were "in character."
Quote:
Originally Posted by RMS
The irony here is that I was just remarking to someone the other day how I thought RPG players in general are much more literal with rules now than I remember in the "old days where we'd just wing it". It might just be me though. I bought the original games, read them, and taught them to everyone and have GM'd 90% of the time, so it might just be me and my impatience with looking things up, tracking things, and all things fiddly. (To be fair, I would have gone into more detail 20 years ago too. Time constraints now make me even more impatient with minutia.)
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I think it is sort of a cycle. Early on, the books were thinner and the rules more sketchy, so we tended to wing it more. Then, by the mid 80s, games got very detailed oriented, and regimented. Later, rules were simplified over roleplaying and storytelling. With d20, there has been a trend towards detail for D&D. Still I think most old time GMs, especially those for non-d20 systems are probably more comfortable "winging it" as we had to do it more. Same with writing adventures, due to the relatively limited number of adventures published for most RPG. We had to do it for ourselves more, so we are less worried about following what's written in the book.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RMS
Most of my RQ groups have been on the smaller end (2-4 players). I can't even imagine running for 70 characters. Our big battles might get into the 20-30 range with allies, followers, etc. on both sides but that's it.
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Most of my groups have been small too. I fine between 3-5 to be the idea number, More than that and it hard for them all to get involved and stay focused. Less and it limits the options available to them and to the GM.
Here is my bit of irony. The big battle in question only had a couple of PCs on that particular adventure. It ended up being a couple of PC leading a small band of NPCs into a ruined castle that was in fact the lair of the enemy. The group managed to get inside, but then altered the whole enemy forces at once. So I ended up doing a LOT of the bookkeeping on that one.
Overall it was an exciting battle, as they got trapped and had to hold off two stairwells to keep from getting overwhelmed, but I wouldn't want to make a habit of it. It is one of the memorable, dramatic battles of that campaign, and a neat exercise in in running a skirmish SR by SR, but definitely a "try once" sort of thing.
Now I'd probably just do a quick roll of dice for each stairwell and if someone blows his skill roll, he get hurt, two failures and he drops. Probably get results similar to doing it out the long way, too.